Grassy Narrows

Solidarity with Grassy Narrows has been one of the cornerstones of AW@L’s work since day one. Members of AW@L were involved with Grassy Narrows’ TransCanada Highway blockade in 2006, we have done several actions at Queens’ Park, participated in the International Day of Action, and have hosted friends from Grassy Narrows First Nation at Laurier and at the KW Community Centre for Social Justice for info nights and fundraisers. While some of these actions happened before AW@L existed formally, the actions and the community that they support are a big part of the reason why AW@L exists at all.
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Grassy Narrows Trappers vs Ontario Government

Oct 5, 2009

Grassy Narrows’ Legal Challenge to Clearcut Logging Begins
Toronto, ON –The Ontario Superior Court begins hearing evidence today in Grassy Narrows’ case against logging on its traditional lands. Grassy Narrows is challenging Ontario’s right to approve industrial logging that interferes with its constitutionally guaranteed treaty rights. The Grassy Narrows trappers have been in the courts for close to a decade fighting to protect Treaty 3, which was signed by the Government of Canada in 1873. The trial is expected to last approximately 75 days. Read more.

Human Rights must be the Priority at Grassy Narrows

Sept 1, 2009

Joint public statement:
As organizations promoting social justice, environmental protection and reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, we are calling on the Government of Ontario to make an immediate, public commitment that there will be no logging in the traditional territory of the Grassy Narrows First Nation without the consent of the community.
Read the full statement or the press release.

Logging Suspended at Grassy Narrows!

June 4, 2008

AbitibiBowater, the biggest paper company in the world, has suspended logging on the traditional territory of the Grassy Narrows First Nation--a major step toward establishing a moratorium on industrial development advocated by the community. Read More.

Gathering of Mother Earth Protectors

May 26-29, 2008

On May 26th Indigenous communities and supporters gathered at Queen’s Park to uphold our duty to protect the land, forest, water, and air and to promote respect for our Indigenous rights to say no to economic exploitation and environmental destruction. Read More.

Grassy Narrows Campaign Scores a Major Victory

February 28, 2008

Less than a month after the International Day of Action against OfficeMax/Grand&Toy, Boise Inc., their largest paper supplier, announced that it will suspend purchasing from clear cuts in Grassy Narrows by June. Read More.

AW@L joins RAN chapters across the continent to deliver message to Grand & Toy and Office Max

January 30, 2008

"Today, members of AW@L conducted actions against Grand & Toy in both Waterloo and Toronto. Grand & Toy purchases paper made from wood pulp obtained through clear-cut logging in the Whiskey Jack Forest of Northwest Ontario. The Grassy Narrows First Nation, one of more than 600 Indigenous communities located in Canada's vast Boreal forest, assert rights over a region, including the Whiskey Jack, as its traditional and has long objected to clear-cut logging there. The Canadian constitution affirms Treaty commitments to First Nations which safeguards their traditional territories for customary uses. In January 2007, the Grassy Narrows community called for a moratorium on all industrial activity on its traditional territory without its free, prior and informed consent." Read More. SeeVideo Report from Waterloo.

Native Rights Now: AW@L, RAN and youth from Grassy Narrows erect 30 foot Teepee at Queens Park

June 25, 2007

This action comes as Canada braces for a potentially disruptive National Day of Action for Indigenous Rights on June 29. Today’s events reflect the recent findings of the provincially commissioned Ipperwash Inquiry, according to which "the single biggest source of frustration, distrust, and ill-feeling among Aboriginal people in Ontario is our failure to deal in a just and expeditious way with breaches of treaty and other legal obligations to First Nations." Read More.

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BACKGROUND

from FreeGrassy.org

Asubpeeschoseewagong - the Indigenous or Ojibway name for Grassy Narrows is situated 80 kilometers north of Kenora, Ontario in Canada. The band membership is approximately 1,000, and their traditional landuse area spans a forest of approximately 2,500 miles. The community has lived sustainably for millennia for physical, economic, cultural and spiritual sustenance. Approximately 50 percent of the community still lives a subsistence way of life where members depend upon hunting, trapping, and gathering berries and medicines from the land.

The Grassy Narrows community has been through many traumas including attendance in white-governed residential schools, forced relocation away from their traditional living areas, mercury contamination, flooding of sacred grounds and burial sites, and clearcut logging of their forests. These traumas have led to many social, health and economic problems, as well as the devastation of the culture.

For thousands of years this community has been strong and self-reliant. Now, as a result of the continued economic dispossession and cultural anniliation that they have suffered, Grassy Narrows exhibits the signs of distress that have become typical of First Nations communities across Canada. Indigenous people, as compared to any other racial or cultural group in Canada, have the lowest life expectancies, highest infant mortality rates, substandard and overcrowded housing, lower education and employment levels, and the highest incarceration rates. Native people lead in the statistics of suicide, alcoholism, and family abuse.

In the face of this oppression, the people of Grassy Narrows are actively resisting the continued destruction of their territories, re-occupying their lands, reviving their culture and fighting for the right to manage their land as they see fit, otherwise known as self-determination.